The Return!

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Hello to you all!

It has been a while since I posted anything here and a whole host of things have happened. For a brief catchup on those thing, feel free to check out my videos over on my YouTube channel, where I will soon be uploading new videos. 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR0rjjCNXgX89MfQl-PGZzg/feed?activity_view=3

Since you last read about my life, I have been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disroder, I have been taken advantage of and raped, faced homelessness having to live in a B&B, had to call 999 and spend a morning in A&E and moved into a new flat just before Christmas. It has been quite a ride.

Firstly, I'd like to say that I couldn't have survived any of that without my friends or the support of Croydon Drop-In. Now I have Family Mosaic to add to the list because they're another invaluable organisation. 

As of the stroke of midnight I am 23 days self-harm free. This is a huge achievement for me. I aim to make it to 31 days. Then 2 months. It's an ongoing battle but I'm willing to fight it. 

I shall be back soon to talk to you some more!

Stay safe 

:) x

Freedom.

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I was free from The Monster for 8 days. They were long days and I heard him tapping away in my head but I ignored him. Sometimes, it was really difficult. I thought that having a friend to stay would make it easier but it turns out that it was much harder than I thought. I’ve waited to write this because I wasn’t sure of the words to say about it. I loved having the company. I loved that there was somebody there worrying about me and that I was accountable to another human being so I couldn’t just cave in to The Monster or go for a walk to shut him up. Much as I loved it, I was always anxious. When you’re depressed, a whole day can seem like a lifetime sometimes and a week can feel like an eternity. I don’t know how to express how grateful I am that I had one of my best friends here for that long; Lord knows she got the raw end of the deal with the things she had to listen to and we know it’s never fun hanging out with somebody who is depressed. I am truly grateful; I am. But The Monster in my head is pissed off. I couldn’t find the words before to say how difficult it is to hold it together for somebody else.

During those 8 days, I had laughs and food and I made it to all of my appointments. I spent time doing things with another living person instead of sitting alone in my room. I barely slept though and if I did sleep; it was at the wrong times and for the wrong reasons. I remember not wanting to wake her up because she needed to sleep. I remember staring at my anti-depressants and just wishing for a quick end and for my head to stop causing so much torment when I had exactly what I wanted; a friend and to not be alone. It just wouldn’t stop. Bang, bang, bang. Over and over again with no reprieve. I stared at the spot where I knew my razor blade was. I longingly looked at it. I couldn’t touch it. It wouldn’t be very fair to let her wake up the next day and find me in a worse mess than before she went to sleep. So I sat in my tent. I rocked backwards and forwards. I cried as silently as I could. I tried not to let on how tired I was or how scared I was that the minute she left I would cave.

One day, she went to see a friend in London. That was a difficult day for me because I knew even before she left what I wanted to do and what I thought I deserved to do. I didn’t do it. The guilt that I thought I would feel to see her face if she came back and I’d cut myself was worse than the guilt I was feeling. I hate myself but it’s not fair to make other people see the pain you’re in. I want to, all of the time I want to prove just how much it hurts and that’s why it’s a compulsion to cut or to be sick but it isn’t fair on other people. Being selfish, yes – there’s no way to avoid that but it can’t be seen and when it can be seen, it can’t be believed. For me; to commit suicide is to be selfless. My depression tells me that I am a burden on society. It tells me that I shouldn’t ask for help every week from a counsellor because maybe an 11 year old deserves the help more than I do. Maybe they’re not as messed up as me or maybe they didn’t do as many bad things as my depression tells me I did. So, for me, if I committed suicide, I would be saving a lot of people from a lot of bother. I already know I’ve had people walk out of my life because it was too difficult to be there. I don’t hold it against them. It’s hard to be a friend to somebody who is depressed because it’s relentless and it’s so damn repetitive and honestly, if I didn’t know what it was like to be this way and live like this, I probably wouldn’t want to try as hard as my friends do to be a friend to me. Depression is draining on everybody. It drains NHS money. It drains friendships and relationships. It drains the people that it affects. Mental Health issues are draining on our society and we’re told so many times to just, “get on with it”, “be happy”, “try harder”, “just stop being sad” and so we take the problem away. We kill ourselves to save you from being drained. Jesus died to forgive us our sins. We die so you don’t have to moan about money being spent on us instead of Cancer Care. We kill ourselves because life is miserable for us but we don’t want it to be miserable for you.

My friend went a few days ago. Predictably, she had been gone a few hours and I’d already cut myself. It was a release for me. Now, it is three days later and I can proudly say that I am self-harm free for my third day. This is an achievement for me at this present time. I do not care about the past right now and I do not care about the possible screw ups of the future. I am here and I am fighting; for my life, for the chance to have a future and to become a person who changes the lives of young people who think they are a drain on society (because they’re told they are). I don’t know if writing this here is the cowardly way of telling my best friend how difficult it was but keeping things bottled up never helps; something she tells me a lot and so here I am, baring the truth to her eternally in my writing.

The funny thing is, I know that she’s reading this and maybe she’s crying, maybe she’s not but I know for sure that she’s saying, “Why didn’t you just wake me up?” I couldn’t. It’s easier to share how bad things are and how I’ve done silly things when I’m typing it. It takes more courage to tell somebody in person and I’m still fresh off my breaking down in front of the counsellor suicidal night and the memories of being so pathetic that don’t fill me with pride.

I’m lucky, really. I have friends who will stand by me no matter what. They may not always understand but they stick by my side and do what they can to make me see the good in the world; the good in myself. Thank You, All <3.

This is the end of my third self-harm free day. I am free right now. I am alive.

Powerless.

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I never thought of myself as somebody who had power over anything, really. I have no power over people dropping bombs or Mother Nature ripping cities to shreds. I have no power to change the weather. We all have power over something though; maybe we just don’t realise it until we become powerless. Power can be found in the smallest actions.

Power is defined as the ability or capacity to do something or to act in a particular way; the power of speech for example is quite clearly the ability to talk. Not all of us have this power. It’s not a superpower by any stretch, but it’s a power and without it, we’re powerless. We’re powerless to the cruel world and the dangers on every corner. If we can’t hear, we’re powerless to the dangers of the oncoming storms. If we cannot see, we’re powerless to the wars around us.

I have the power of speech and sight and hearing; I’d be lost without these and yet still any one of these would be more understandable and accepted than the ways I have lost my power. As a child, growing up, I had the power to eat, the power to get out of bed, the power to walk, the list goes on. I had power over myself. I’ve lost this power. I’ve become powerless to The Monster within me.

The Monster forces me to put my fingers down my throat as far as they will go. I know I shouldn’t do this. I know I don’t want to do this. The back of my throat isn’t a place that I want to explore. I am crying and I’m wishing somebody would walk by this way and stop me from doing this. Please. Somebody, just stop this. I scream into the void of my brain. “Stop!” bounces off the sides of my head like the constant echo of “hello” in a cave.

I am powerless. I am struck by fear. I am paralysed. My senses are heightened. The leaves rustle all around me. The water trickles behind me, snaking its way through the landscape towards its prey. Somebody coughs but there is nobody around me; a passer-by in the distance oblivious to the war that rages on. I think that I can quell The Monster with a drink but the juice encourages him. I repeat the action over and over. With every new act of forceful violence against my throat, I am struck by some new fear. I am powerless to this and I cannot see the way out so I continue to push until I am empty and there is nothing left for me to offer. I lack the energy to walk home; I stumble and I am close to falling many times. I hear movements all around me; the rustle of a leaf is an oncoming fox attack. Further I walk but I do not reach my destination. I am caught in the timelessness. I listen to the world outside; to the birds humming their nightly songs, to the people enjoying their Saturday night freedom, to the fox as it forages for scraps of food, to the cars as they travel their weary roads and still I am lost.

I don’t know who won because I don’t understand if The Monster is me or not. How can it be something else? It must be me? But I know I don’t want this for myself and it’s so horrible that most of me wishes Death would come by to take me instead. Hours later, as I write this, my throat burns like the glowing fire but it is far from pretty. There is no remedy for the constant pain that I feel and sleep will not come. I have been punished. I’m afraid, anyway, that if I go to bed, I’ll never get out of it again. So I stay awake and I write. I listen to the birds as they sing their morning songs and I watch the sun as it rises to start its day, oblivious to the conflicts of the world and its people.

Opening The Can

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I have come to realise that to have nobody is not the worst thing that could happen to me because I’ll always have myself. The worst thing is having people. But those people do not listen to me, they do not believe what I tell them; their every movement of the mouth is tainted with betrayal. I am left wondering, why, all of the time. I am left hating them. I am left with nothing to do but hurt myself, maim myself because that, at least, they could see. Nobody can deny that cuts exist although for the longest time I don’t believe that anybody saw all of the bruises or that my mum registered the bite marks on my bottom; the ones that were impossible for me to cause myself. I have no choice but to walk away from them because others tell me that I am important. I must look after me because nobody else will and I must not let The Monster consume me. I must walk away from them but that is not sad for me. What is sad is that they won’t notice that I am gone. Whether I have walked or jumped. But that’s okay. My life would be easier and so would theirs.

I put the phone down and my anger flares. I need to somewhere. Do something. Escape! Run! Get out! An endless stream of shouts in my head that cannot be tamed and like the lioness hunting her prey, I am helpless to the oncoming wreckage. I do not think I have a plan, at least not a plan to end my life; not today. I buy chips and consume them hungrily though I am far from hungry; it is not yet feeding time. I wander aimlessly through the park. I find myself walking to the spot in the woods where I so often make myself sick but I am walking the wrong way. I am taking the path towards it that I would normally take away from it. It is unfamiliar to me though I walk it so often; the destination is the same and the goal, to feel empty, is unchanged. I stumble through the wilderness feeling lost and inadequate.

Thoughts race through my mind. My anger gets bigger and blacker with every step that I take. Would it have hurt for the first question to have been, “how are you?” It does not take me long to be sick and I don’t have to force myself in the usual way because I am ready for this; I am ready to be emptied of anger, frustration, pain; all of the emotions that I cannot handle and that threaten to rip me apart. I want to feel nothing. The act is complete but now I feel stupid. Guilt and anger bubble inside of me, like Mount Etna, I am ready to erupt. I squash my coke can but that is not enough to take the anger away. My mind is consumed by it. I tear the can apart. The sharp edge looks inviting to me and before I realise what I am doing or have the power to stop it, I am repeatedly cutting myself using the razor sharp sides of the can. Once more it is my left hand that takes the blow. The blood seeps out and I am powerless to stop it. It is not pretty. There is nothing pretty about what I have done this evening. I deserve the needling pain in my hand for my stupidity. Letting them get to me and letting them win because I am hurting again is inexcusable and tantamount to letting My Monster win.

This is not how today was meant to go. I had come so far over the week since my willingness to end my life. I had come so far and as quickly as my mood shifted the night I was sent to A&E, I snapped today. I will not let them control me now when they did not save me from the pain, the trauma and the unbearable neglect. It was no war. There were no Nazis and Hitler did not invade. Nobody was killed. Comparatively my hell was nothing but it was My Hell, My War. My “brother” was My Hitler. My parents, the Nazis. I was expendable. I could be beaten and would not complain. I could be abused and would not put up a fight. It was My War. I was a victim of many forms of abuse as a child and I survived. What does that even mean? What is surviving? Still being alive? Spending my days wanting to end my life is not surviving. I don’t know what is but this cruel form of existence with constant flashbacks is no life to happily live.

I sit here and I wonder who held the most blame, Hitler for creating the hysteria or the Germans who went along with it? My “brother” for abusing me or me for never having the courage to speak up until it was too late? We were both children after all. Everything is justifiable when you’re a child.

I Cut and I Bleed

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            When I was a child and I heard the other kids in my class talk about people they knew that would ‘cut’ themselves; I never understood. I don’t think that I really knew what they meant. I saw how you could cut bread, meat, fish and even chocolate if you so wished but to cut yourself; that never made any sense to me. How do you go about doing that? Why would you do that? I had been hurt by somebody else every day for years; why would someone turn on themselves like that? For the longest time, I didn’t understand.

The day I wrote my teacher’s name on my left hand with my compass in maths was a day when I came close to understanding. Nothing seemed to make any sense to me right then. I had been told repeatedly to see my Head of Year every Tuesday at lunchtime so that she could make sure I was alright. I’m still not sure she really did anything beyond satisfying some small doubt within her. I’d already told her things were happening at home and nothing was done. I think this was my cry for help. I needed somebody to notice me; to see what was happening that I couldn’t voice. Telling the family secrets was and is forbidden; I’m sure they’ll come after me soon. I turned on myself in my time of need to show something concrete that the teachers could see. If they saw me doing this to myself, then maybe they’d believe what I was saying and I would get some help; somebody would take me away from that hellhole. But nobody did.

Now, I can see the beauty of cutting yourself. I have always loved colouring in. Cutting yourself is like colouring in your own body. There is a satisfaction in it that cannot adequately be explained. It was difficult for me the first few times that I cut myself. I didn’t know how to; how do you just go ahead and cut yourself? It’s not something that comes naturally when your every instinct is to protect your body from harm. I tried with scissors more than once but that doesn’t do a lot. It helped a little. I had some brief respite from the emotional pain ripping me apart.

It’s fascinating to me that a kitchen knife can so easily cut through an onion, with so many layers and a potato with such a solid interior but human skin? Human skin is tough; unyielding to the touch of the cool, steel blade. I cut at my arm like I would cut some bread but after an hour, I am still only just beneath the surface and it looks more like a burn than anything else. I did not realise than an hour had passed until the programme that I was watching finished. I had been methodically carving at my flesh, backwards and forwards; backwards and forwards. When the hour had passed, I put the knife away and I cleaned my cuts, bandaged my arm like anybody would. The black ball of pain inside of my heart had become a little smaller. It is harder to feel emotional pain when you have a pain that is physical; a pain that can be seen and understood by all and yet I had felt nothing when I cut into my arm so violently for so long. There was no pain. The physical pain had cancelled out the emotional pain and I was left hollow, like the tree hit by lightning with no hope of growth. I was there and I existed but I was not me. There was no feeling. There was no light and there was no dark. I existed but I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I was numb to the pain and numb to the world. I can only hope I passed out after that.

The real danger for me right now is that I am not frantic and I am not fidgety. I am calmly contemplating the next brutal act I will perform on myself at the bequest of My Monster. He has left me alone during the days and haunted my dreams with his face and his soul-destroying voice. He knows how to get to me. He knows that the intense fear will be greater inside me if I am calm when he speaks to me. I am better able to protect myself against him when I fidget because there is a part of me that is still in control; a part of me that knows cutting myself is stupid and wrong. When I am calm, I have already rationalised the act. I can see the relief from the pain that eats me alive; from the unheard cries caught in my throat. I can feel the horror swell within in me because I know what must be done and I know that it is well deserved for being such a failure; for being a disgrace to my family; for being born at all.

When I am calm, I welcome the sweet release of the blade against my flesh. I welcome the sight of the blood as it trickles down my arm and into the sink. As the blood mixes with the water, it swirls and the patterns that appear are pretty; worthy of being remembered, somebody should capture that moment. It does not scare me that I will lose blood and it does not scare me that I could go too far. Whatever happens will be whatever is deserved. There must always be blood loss in a war and while I cannot reach him to bleed him to the death he so surely deserves; the blood loss must be mine.

Trapped Cries

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“Shit! It’s raining!” is something I say far too much during the summer months and as luck would have it, my washing is predictably outside. As surely as my clothes become heavier with the dampening rain; my mood plummets. I race downstairs, throw my shoes on and rush into the oncoming torrent of pelting abuse the rain offers to me. There is no easy way to do this quickly. Grab clothing, unpeg on both sides, throw clothing into basket, throw pegs into bag, rinse and repeat the necessary amount of times. This process that I seem to fulfil every weekend during our delightful British weather casts my mood into a shadowy dungeon. I am easily frustrated as I try to hurry my movements; as I try to stop an oncoming panic attack. The rain drenches me like cancer overrides the body; quickly, angrily and with no reprieve in sight. I am wet enough to need a change of clothing and I’m not blind to the irony of the situation but it’s not funny. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the kitchen knife as I walk past the counter and I know there is a part of me that has been awakened by the fresh frustrations and this part of me now wants to cut.

There is no reason for me to blame myself for this new situation. The weather changes and it is sporadic at best in the UK. I know this. My mood so often shifts like the weather. It is so predictably unpredictable. - From sunny to stormy in a split second. The anger surges through me and it feels electric; I could spark an entire war with this anger that I feel. I cast aside my washing as I enter my room. There is no point in attempting to dry it here. This room cannot house such a saturated mess in need of such warmth. It is not lost on me that my clothes are now like my heart.

My legs shake violently as I try to maintain the composure to write this. Putting a barrier up to the anger is difficult and it requires so much of my strength that I am worried I will not stop the panic in time. I am panicking a lot. My plan for the washing did not go my way. I was taken out of my comfort zone as swiftly as ice melting in a fire and this panic, though familiar to me, is not something that I can suppress all that easily. It is a panic linked with my PTSD. Air rips through my body, grating at my insides as I try to breathe and with crushing speed, I am 12 years old again.

I am standing outside the back door of my childhood home in my swimming costume as the sun streams down on me. It is the first warm day in a while and the patio warms my bare feet. My swimming costume is a mixture of black and bright blue; my favourite colour. I’m excited to go in the pool that my Dad has put up in the back garden. I am happy. The weekend is here and I have done all of my homework and household chores. I can just swim in the pool and relax just like a normal 12 year old.

I don’t make it to the pool. My brother comes outside, which confuses me because I didn’t know that he was home. Maybe he just got back from somewhere. I don’t really know and I don’t really care. My brother and I argue an awful lot. I hate him; quite honestly not that anybody would see or believe that from me.

“Let’s play a game”, he says to me. I figure that’s okay because it’s sunny; maybe he wants to play a water game or something; I don’t even know what games you’d play in a pool this small. He is 15. I am 12. He goes back inside to the kitchen while I wait for him, longingly looking at the pool. The pool is always best on the first day that it is put up, before the flies have had their chance at swimming in it and the leaves have settled upon the glistening surface. When the pool is full of flies, it always reminds me of the outside swimming pools in France; they’re always full of unsuspecting, dead flies when we arrive for our holidays. That always makes me feel sick. Our pool isn’t like that today though. There are no flies. The water is unsullied; just waiting for me.

My brother comes back from the kitchen after a minute or two and he is holding the bag with the pegs in it. I am confused because I don’t know of a game you can play with pegs and we don’t have any washing to put on the line. I’m ready to swim in the pool; not play an imaginary game. I don’t ask him what the game is because I figure he’ll tell me soon and I’m not going to waste my words on this question. I stand and stare at him, waiting.

The game is not a game. The game is an act by him. He thinks that calling it a game makes it okay. “It’s only a game” is such a common phrase. This is not a game and this is not okay but my words are trapped in my throat and I don’t know how to escape from this. He is older than me and he is bigger than me. I have felt the sharp, quick thud of his trainers against my body before; his hands have struck me many times and I have no wish for this to be repeated. I am frozen in time. I am frozen and terrified. My breath catches.

“Let’s see how many pegs we can put on you”. He is smiling. This is not funny to me. I don’t want to smile. I don’t understand this. I’m pretty sure he shouldn’t be touching me there at all. I wasn’t sure when I was 6 or even when I was 10 but now I am 12 and I’m pretty sure this isn’t right. There is nothing that I can do though. I am powerless. There’s a question in my mind but it doesn’t invite the same excitement within me as it does him. I have a rising panic within me as I wonder how many pegs can be attached to my private parts. I do not ask why. I do not say no. I do not kick, scream, yell or fight against him. It is like I am drowning in quick sand with nobody to pull me out and no branch in sight.

“Lift your swimming costume out of the way, right there.”

“Hold this for me.”

“Just pull that out of the way while I put this here.”

“I said hold it out of the way! Don’t let go of it, idiot!”

“There. All finished. Let go of the skin now and let me count them.”

The answer is more than 10. The answer is that it hurts. I am mortified. I wish I could die right now. I do not want to be alive like this. He is proud of his achievement. He walks away, smiling; leaving me to shamefully remove these objects. I do not cry. I do not look. I take them off one by one; ignoring the pain. I wash them in the kitchen sink. I go to the toilet and I get on with my day.

This is one of those things that happen to me. There is nobody to ask for help. There is nothing to do but pretend it hasn’t bothered me.

I never stopped to think about my back garden being an open space. I didn’t stop to wonder if the people in the nursing home behind our house could see what happened or whether my neighbours were looking out of the window. There was a blind spot at my childhood house. If you were to stand on the patio in a certain place, you wouldn’t be seen by anybody looking out of any of the windows at the back of the house. We weren’t stood in that place. Anybody could have seen. But if anybody did; nobody did anything to help.